Professor Starson's landmark case established legal right to refuse medication, but he's still fighting his own battle

Professor Starson still fighting to escape medication

Professor Starson says he is 17 billion years old, immortal, engaged to Joan Rivers, and about to publish groundbreaking physics research about the speed of light, the mass of the Earth, and the temperature of the universe, which he worked out in his apartment in northwest Toronto.

He calls himself the world’s official “top scientist.”

In his first interview since being conditionally discharged from the criminal justice system, 15 years after being found not criminally responsible for death threats, the man whose Supreme Court case established the legal right to refuse medication said he is healthy and happy, “fantastic, plus plus plus, and other superlatives.”

He is taking anti-psychotic drugs — this is effectively the condition of his discharge — but the grandiose delusions remain, symptomatic of a lifelong mental illness that has been variously diagnosed as bipolar or schizo-affective disorder. And as the Ontario Court of Appeal has held in a new ruling, he continues to pose a “significant threat to the safety of the public,” due to his “extremely intimidating behaviour.”

There’s like 17 scientific reasons for the name Starson, but I’m not going to get into that with you right now. It’s a pretty clear name

“I am Professor Starson. That’s title and name,” he said. “Scott is not my name. That was a given name. [He was born Scott Schutzman, but legally changed it. He is not a professor.] My only name is Starson, and that’s the most important name that there is throughout the entire universe and on Earth. There’s like 17 scientific reasons for the name Starson, but I’m not going to get into that with you right now. It’s a pretty clear name. It’s a name that makes it look like the situation is not just from Earth.”

Now in his late fifties, Professor Starson used to be an electrical engineer and salesman for General Radio, but a developing mental illness led to professional problems and criminal charges about death threats against neighbours. Committed by a criminal court to a psychiatric hospital, he adamantly denied being sick and refused all treatment, so doctors sought and obtained a ruling that he was incapable of consenting to treatment, and thus could be forced.

By the time his appeals reached the Supreme Court in 2003, he was famous, and compared in the press to John Nash, the brilliant schizophrenic mathematician who won a Nobel prize and inspired the movie A Beautiful Mind. A professor at Stanford vouched for the bona fides of Starson’s scientific genius, saying his thinking was 10 years ahead of its time, and included him as a co-author on a paper called Discrete Anti-Gravity.

I’ll be happier than anyone soon, and I already was

“I’ll be happier than anyone soon, and I already was,” he said. “I say that I am a scientist first, in that I go searching for problems, because the best scientists search for problems, not only solve, but search for problems … I’m an engineer second, in that I go solving those problems, sometimes through technology. And I am an insatiable romantic third, because I enjoy the fruits and works and successes of my work. There’s a hierarchy of priorities.”

A key aspect of the Supreme Court’s ruling in his favour — in which current Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin wrote for the dissenting minority — was that a person’s best interest, as judged by doctors, is irrelevant to the question of whether they are capable of consenting to treatment. Rather, as Madam Justice McLachlin described it, “a capable patient must be able to understand the relevant information, apply it to his or her personal circumstances and weigh the foreseeable risks and benefits of a decision or lack of decision.”

In his latest case, Starson had asked the Court of Appeal to grant him an absolute discharge, which would have brought his legal journey to a firm close. Instead, it upheld a decision of the Ontario Review Board last summer that imposed the condition of weekly meetings with psychiatric staff of the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health. Before that, he had been in and out of CAMH, still subject to the ORB’s annual rulings on the threat he poses to the public. Prior to that, he was held at secure forensic hospitals, and was forcibly medicated even after his Supreme Court win, when he was once again judged incapable.

He has made it perfectly plain and clear that he would immediately discontinue all medications

“The [latest Court of Appeal] judgement is that he’s receiving medications and that’s why he’s not presenting as threatening or a risk at this time, but if he were to be discharged absolutely from the Review Board, he has made it perfectly plain and clear that he would immediately discontinue all medications,” said Anita Szigeti, the lawyer who has acted as a friend of the court in Starson’s cases going back 15 years.

Although it is not detailed in the Court of Appeal’s ruling, Ms. Szigeti said the threat Starson poses is of psychological harm, not physical violence.

“He will inform people when they may expire, when their natural expiration date is to be expected. So, ‘You will die on such and such a date.’ Some people don’t respond well to that type of stuff,” she said. She described him as “a super-intelligent, hyper-articulate gentleman, polite and kind soul, who has a fantastic sense of humour.”

“He certainly says some outrageous things at times, but he’s remarkable, a kind-hearted guy,” said Dennis Daoust, a friend to whom Starson gave legal authority to consent to his medication levels. Mr. Daoust said Starson is a large man, and understandably threatening to strangers, but in 40 years he has never seen him aggressive.

“I realize I can be intimidating,” Professor Starson said in the interview. “Sometimes scientists tend to straighten out a layperson by being a little, what might appear to be a little arrogant, or intimidating, on the information they may have an understanding of. But there’s nothing really that wrong in doing that, because the other person, unless they are genuinely naive and have just asked a question outside the bounds of their awareness, it’s constructive. ”

He still denies he is mentally ill, and said psychiatry is basically dogmatic.

“The shrink profession is not scientific. It’s not based on understanding and factual information, and/or self-correctedness. Scientific processes self-correct when you find you’re wrong about something.”

Michael Bay, who chaired Ontario’s Consent and Capacity Board when it decided Starson was incapable of consenting to treatment, said the Starson case did not change the law, but rather reflected a cultural shift. Where once a doctor’s judgment was seen as paramount, even to the point of infallibility, Starson’s case heralded the rise of patient autonomy.

Once there were plenty of beds available, and too many people were being held and treated against their will. Now there are not enough beds, and families struggle to get their loved ones treated, Mr. Bay said.

“The law really hasn’t caught up with that. To me, that’s the problem of the future,” Mr. Bay said. “Starson helped us along that road of patient autonomy, but we have to help doctors understand that and implement it.”

In the interview, Professor Starson said the universe will reach its maximum size — he calls it “closure” — in 133 billion years, whereupon another dimension will be added.

“The universe is five-dimensional and I’m five-dimensional,” he said. “I’m going to get the world better and better more beautiful into the future.”

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